“Strong, Silent, and Suffering”: The Emotional Education Men Never Got

Photo by: @felipepelaquim

Most men aren’t taught how to care for their mental health. They’re taught how to perform masculinity.

From early childhood, boys are conditioned to embody a narrow version of manhood: be tough, don’t cry, stay in control. Vulnerability is treated as a liability, and tenderness as a threat. The result? A dangerous emotional straightjacket — one that leaves men silently suffering under the weight of feelings they were never allowed to name.

But here’s the thing we don’t talk about enough: patriarchy isn’t just enforced by men. Women — including mothers, partners, educators, and peers — are often taught to affirm these same harmful scripts. Boys are told to “man up,” but they’re also laughed at or dismissed when they show emotion. A boy who cries too much is “too sensitive.” A man who speaks openly about his depression is labeled “weak.” And still — in 2025 — women frequently say they want a “strong man,” while recoiling when that man shows vulnerability.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about naming a dynamic we’re all socialized into. Patriarchy teaches us that a man’s value lies in stoicism and dominance. That being “a real man” means leading without emotion, protecting without needing, and loving without expressing too much. When men deviate from this — when they express grief, fear, confusion — they’re often met with confusion or even contempt.

Even the label “toxic masculinity,” while useful in describing harmful patterns, can sometimes do more harm than good. It implies that masculinity itself is the issue — instead of the rigid expectations surrounding it. It creates another binary: good vs. bad men, healed vs. broken. But most men aren’t toxic. They’re trying to survive a system that never gave them emotional language or permission to feel.

What if instead of labeling, we expanded?

Photo by Alekon Pictures

Enter: the feeling wheel.
Created by Dr. Gloria Willcox, the feeling wheel is a simple but radical tool. At its core are six emotions: mad, sad, scared, joyful, powerful, peaceful. From there, it branches outward into more nuanced feelings: helpless, proud, rejected, curious, lonely, frustrated. This is the emotional vocabulary that patriarchy strips away from men.

And yet — these are the words that can save lives.

Men are not emotionless. They’re emotionally starved. And instead of asking why aren’t men more open? — we should be asking what happens to boys when they are? Because often, they’re punished. Shamed. Or ignored altogether.

The mental health crisis among men is not just about suicide rates or substance use. It’s about emotional disconnection. It’s about fathers who were never taught how to hug their sons. Boys who stopped crying at age 7. Men who say “I’m fine” when they mean “I’m drowning.”

And into this vacuum steps a growing ecosystem of online “gurus” peddling hypermasculine nonsense: domination over empathy, control over collaboration, performance over connection. These influencers don’t teach healing — they teach armor. They capitalize on loneliness by offering power instead of presence. And they convince young men that the only way to feel seen is to suppress everything soft.

We need a new way forward — one that welcomes the full spectrum of feeling.

Photo by: Athena Sandrini

That starts with spaces where men can feel without fear. Therapy can be that space. But so can community, friendship, mentorship. We need more models of healthy masculinity — not performative, not sanitized, but real. Men who are strong and scared. Who can protect and cry. Who can lead and ask for help.

And we need to challenge our own internalized assumptions. Women and femmes must also do the work of interrogating the ways we police men’s emotions. Because it’s not fair to demand vulnerability from men while clinging to outdated ideas of what “strength” should look like.

Emotional literacy is liberation. And that liberation benefits everyone — not just men.

When men heal, cycles of intergenerational harm are interrupted. Families shift. Partners feel safer. Children grow up knowing that love can be expressed, not just assumed.

So instead of waiting for permission or performing a version of masculinity that never truly fit, we invite men to do the work — not to be fixed, but to be free. To choose presence over performance. To explore the full range of who they are — strength and softness, anger and awe, grief and joy — without shame.

This isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you were before the world told you to shrink. Before you were taught that love had to be earned through silence or sacrifice. So to the men reading this: you’re not too far gone. You’re not too sensitive. You’re not alone.

You are human. And the most radical thing you can do — for yourself, for those you love, for the world — is to show up as you. Fully. Tenderly. Unapologetically. One feeling at a time.